Sustainability – Kindred Mediahttp://kindredmedia.org
Sharing the New Story of Childhood, Parenthood, and the Human FamilyTue, 07 Aug 2018 17:40:18 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.8Re-Examining Human Nature And Re-Creating Society: Four Cornerstones For Transformationhttp://kindredmedia.org/2018/08/re-examining-human-nature-and-re-creating-society-four-cornerstones-for-transformation/
http://kindredmedia.org/2018/08/re-examining-human-nature-and-re-creating-society-four-cornerstones-for-transformation/#respondTue, 07 Aug 2018 17:37:18 +0000http://kindredmedia.org/?p=21710Eisler’s address at James Madison University, “Re-Examining Human Nature and Re-Creating Society: Four Cornerstones for Transformation,” synthesized decades of Eisler’s cutting-edge research into four main foundations for a new kind of society: childhood relations, gender relations, economics and stories. See Kindred’s New Story Glossary of Terms for more on Cultural Transformation Theory. Riane Eisler is […]

Eisler’s address at James Madison University, “Re-Examining Human Nature and Re-Creating Society: Four Cornerstones for Transformation,” synthesized decades of Eisler’s cutting-edge research into four main foundations for a new kind of society: childhood relations, gender relations, economics and stories. See Kindred’s New Story Glossary of Terms for more on Cultural Transformation Theory.

Riane Eisler is a social scientist, attorney, and author whose work on cultural transformation has inspired both scholars and social activists. Her research has impacted many fields, including history, economics, psychology, sociology, and education. She has been a leader in the movement for peace, sustainability, and economic equity, and her pioneering work in human rights has expanded the focus of international organizations to include the rights of women and children.

]]>http://kindredmedia.org/2018/08/re-examining-human-nature-and-re-creating-society-four-cornerstones-for-transformation/feed/0Backlash To Breastfeeding Promotionhttp://kindredmedia.org/2018/07/backlash-to-breastfeeding-promotion/
http://kindredmedia.org/2018/07/backlash-to-breastfeeding-promotion/#respondSun, 15 Jul 2018 15:37:12 +0000http://kindredmedia.org/?p=21581One backlash follows another. Does breastfeeding really matter? The ‘breast is best’ policy backlash’ presented points that are dramatic, contradictory and false. Here is context and what to know. First, came the US governments action in contradiction to history and world opinion: We the people of the United States threaten to unleash punishing trade measures […]

Based on decades of research, the resolution says that mother’s milk is healthiest for children and countries should strive to limit the inaccurate or misleading marketing of breast milk substitutes. Then the United States delegation, embracing the interests of infant formula manufacturers, upended the deliberations. The confrontation was the latest example of the US administration siding with corporate interests on numerous public health and environmental issues.

Playful Wisdom is an intimate journal of an intimate adventure that transforms everyone who takes it. Helping along the way are insights from two of the most respected specialists of our time; Bev Bos and Joseph Chilton Pearce. Playful Wisdom is a meditation, a precious reminder to be touched every day with amazement and wonder, to be innocent once again, this time with wisdom as our wings.

Strange coincidence how this article coincides with the United States delegation of the United Nations-affiliated World Health Assembly being opposed a breastfeeding resolution.

In Jean Liedloff’s classic The Continuum Conceptthe author had to hide the fact from Amazon tribal natives that the majority of western women read books on birth and care instruction for infants and children written by male doctors. She would have lost all credibility if she shared this truth.

Ina May Gaskin (interview), one of the most respected midwives in the world, describes how so much of what was common sense regarding birth and very early mothering has been lost.

To paraphrase, many contemporary adults know absolutely nothing about mothering, and this includes physicians.

Incorrect Point 1: “One in five women have insufficient milk production in the early days of motherhood”

Incorrect Point 2: “Complications from exclusive breastfeeding are common and devastating.”

Personally, this is more than offensive. This is followed a few sentences later with: “a growing number of doctors and nurses… [are] worried that the near single-minded focus on breastfeeding often causes hospital staff to overlook risky behavior, unintentionally putting babies and mothers in harm’s way.”

Incorrect Point 3: “Breastfeeding is truly wonderful if you can make it happen but not of significant consequence if you can’t. For those who have access to clean water, formula can be a healthy choice.”

Most fail to consider that nutrition is but a small part ofthe long list of breastfeeding benefits, which keep being discovered: skin to skin contact, proximity and coherent synchronicity with the electromagnetic energy fields produce by the human heart, mother and baby, close and sustained proximity of the baby to the mother’s face essential for the activation of the visual process, being held, touch, the skin being the largest organ in the body, movement, often rocking, the dominant stimulus in utero, olfactory stimulation, the comforting smell of the mother’s body and sent, body warmth, the sound of the mothers voice. All of these together create the biological equivalent of what most call bonding, that is, feeling safe, loved, and wanted.No bottle and no formula or artificial techno–breast can compare. We quote a leading researcher on mother-child bonding, breastfeeding and peace:

“More damage occurs with the sensory deprivation of pleasure than the actual experiencing of physical painful trauma, which in fact could be handled quite well in individuals who were brought up with a great deal of physical affectional bonding, touch, movement and pleasure which carries with it emotional trust and security. So we really have to look at the trauma of sensory deprivation of physical pleasure and that translates into the separation experiences, the isolation experiences of the infant from the mother. That’s the beginning.”

In an emergency, it is important to use an IV or offer a bottle (best, however, not to routinely introduce practices that create the emergency in the first place), but it should be done in ways that include all the senses and then, when the emergency is over, the bottle should be placed back on the shelf where it belongs.

“Formula manufacturers aggressively promote the idea that today’s “highly-scientific” breast milk substitutes have been “specially formulated” to be “like breast milk.” One leading manufacturer’s advertising campaign even equates its product to a “miracle.” Yet, common commercial representations fail to reveal the rest of the story: researchers are increasingly convinced that despite advances, infant formulas cannot now or ever accurately imitate human breast milk. According to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), pediatric-nutrition researchers at Abbott Laboratories, one of the largest manufacturers of commercial infant formula, recently conceded that creating infant formula to parallel human milk is “impossible.” These scientists, writing in the March, 1994 issue of ENDOCRINE REGULATIONS, state, “[It is] increasingly apparent that infant formula can never duplicate human milk. Human milk contains living cells, hormones, active enzymes, immunoglobulins and compounds with unique structures that cannot be replicated in infant formula.”

Statements denouncing the US anti-breastfeeding actions at the US that have been released to date include:

]]>http://kindredmedia.org/2018/07/backlash-to-breastfeeding-promotion/feed/0USA Seeks To Sacrifice Children To Profitshttp://kindredmedia.org/2018/07/usa-seeks-to-sacrifice-children-to-profits/
http://kindredmedia.org/2018/07/usa-seeks-to-sacrifice-children-to-profits/#respondTue, 10 Jul 2018 22:39:52 +0000http://kindredmedia.org/?p=21570What’s best for baby is not best for money makers Though difficult to establish without assistance, breastfeeding is cheap. Like unmedicalized natural birth, no one makes a profit. Profit makers have been trying to upend natural practices like these for some time. In places like the USA, where corporations fill the purses of politicians, policymakers are pressured to […]

Though difficult to establish without assistance, breastfeeding is cheap. Like unmedicalized natural birth, no one makes a profit. Profit makers have been trying to upend natural practices like these for some time.

In places like the USA, where corporations fill the purses of politicians, policymakers are pressured to ensure profits. A recent example in the news shows how politicians are putting corporate interests first, and thereby promoting illbeing in children. (I give some highlights of the story here, but there are several twists and turns discussed in the report that go beyond this particular incident, so I urge you to read the whole article).

The World Health Organization sought to pass a resolution anticipating it would be quick since it was based on decades of research and there has been worldwide consensus. But no, the Trump administration had other ideas. Here is the resolution:

“Based on decades of research, the resolution says that mother’s milk is healthiest for children and countries should strive to limit the inaccurate or misleading marketing of breast milk substitutes.”

Drawing on interviews with over a dozen witnesses, the New York Times reports about what happened when the resolution began to be discussed:

“Then the United States delegation, embracing the interests of infant formula manufacturers, upended the deliberations.”

The US delegation argued to water down language promoting breastfeeding and language restricting promotion of artificial food. When that did not work, the US delegation “sought to wear down the other participants through procedural maneuvers in a series of meetings that stretched on for two days, an unexpectedly long period.” The delegation did everything it could to bully poorer nations to step away from the resolution, even threatening trade sanctions.

Reporter Andre Jacobs noted: “The confrontation was the latest example of the Trump administration siding with corporate interests on numerous public health and environmental issues.”

In response to the report, Lisa Reagan of Kindred Media said to me: “America’s long-entrenched cultural devotion to death-worshipping greed is no surprise to activists. The calculated action to allow American children to fall behind in health and life expectancy all for corporate profits is ancient child sacrifice to cultural gods, plain and simple.”

There is a reason that breastfeeding has been around for over 30 million years—it is species-specific, “designed” by evolution to optimize normal development. And in humans, breastfeeding was shared when necessary (Hrdy, 2009).

Also troubling, the USA delegation was able to get some language removed from the resolution and almost had “evidence-based” inserted, referring here to randomized controlled experiments. Without question, we cannot conduct randomized experiments on babies in regards to formula vs. breastfeeding—that would be unethical. Instead, we look to evolutionary and animal evidence as well as controlled correlational or post-treatment studies that measure differences.

Of course, studies typically look at a few months of breastfeeding, not at children who receive our species average of 4 years (Konner, 2005; Montagu, 1968). (Think how healthy we could be!)

]]>http://kindredmedia.org/2018/07/usa-seeks-to-sacrifice-children-to-profits/feed/0Prenatal Exposure To Toxins: An Educational Video For New Parentshttp://kindredmedia.org/2018/07/prenatal-exposure-to-toxins-an-educational-video-for-new-parents/
http://kindredmedia.org/2018/07/prenatal-exposure-to-toxins-an-educational-video-for-new-parents/#respondMon, 09 Jul 2018 22:34:16 +0000http://kindredmedia.org/?p=21633How and where we live, work, play and socialize influence our physical and mental health every day throughout our lives. Healthy natural and built environments, good nutrition, regular exercise, positive social interaction, stress reduction and avoidance of toxic exposures can help create the conditions for health across the lifespan. Young adults and prospective parents are […]

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How and where we live, work, play and socialize influence our physical and mental health every day throughout our lives. Healthy natural and built environments, good nutrition, regular exercise, positive social interaction, stress reduction and avoidance of toxic exposures can help create the conditions for health across the lifespan. Young adults and prospective parents are a key audience for messaging on how and why to choose safer practices and products to reduce environmental exposures and enhance lifelong health for themselves and for their children.

This project “Improving Environmental Health Literacy of Young Adults” is intended to create awareness of the role of pre-conception and prenatal environmental influences on the development of childhood leukemia and other diseases including developmental disabilities, asthma, and reproductive health.

Here, we feature two projects developed by our team to educate young couples on environmental toxicants that can impact the health of their children, even before conception. These materials are based on the Story of Health eBook.

This shadow puppet video is a novel health education piece designed to familiarize young couples with environmental toxicants that can affect the health of future infants and children, even before they conceive.

The video was conceived and created by Miranda Kahn for the Center for Integrative Research on Childhood Leukemia and the Environment (CIRCLE) at UC Berkeley School of Public Health.

]]>http://kindredmedia.org/2018/07/prenatal-exposure-to-toxins-an-educational-video-for-new-parents/feed/0Bullfrogs And Graveyards: On A Sense Of Belonginghttp://kindredmedia.org/2018/07/bullfrogs-and-graveyards-on-a-sense-of-belonging/
http://kindredmedia.org/2018/07/bullfrogs-and-graveyards-on-a-sense-of-belonging/#respondMon, 09 Jul 2018 17:23:03 +0000http://kindredmedia.org/?p=21556Jug-a-rum, jug-a-rum, jug-a-rum. I don’t think much of the Westchesters who own the vacation house next door. But I think a lot about their pond. My bedroom windows are up against the state forest, and as I fall to sleep at night, they channel in the songs of the thrushes. The clerestories above me […]

I don’t think much of the Westchesters who own the vacation house next door.But I think a lot about their pond.My bedroom windows are up against the state forest, and as I fall to sleep at night, they channel in the songs of the thrushes.The clerestories above me face south, and capture the bullfrog chorus from the Westchester’s pond. Together the bullfrogs and thrushes create the solstice symphony that sends me into blissful sleep.

The Westchesters were up last weekend.We worked all day Saturday, and didn’t see much of them, save for listening to their ATVs run up and down the dirt roads that run through the State Land. We thought it was strange that the bullfrogs were quiet that night.On Sunday, Ula figured out why.

“They’re dragging something out into the water,” she came running up the road from her walk to tell me.She dove into the house, preparing for what she expected would come next.As the door shut, the explosion from next door rattled our timbers.Dusky and Nikky ran to hide under the beds.I went to the window and saw smoke rising from the pond.Apparently they were firing at tannerites, legal explosive targets.A few minutes later, the automatic rifle fire ensued.

For an hour, the house rattled and shook.Bob’s jaw clenched tight as he sat on the porch with Ula, trying to help her with a buoyancy experiment without losing his temper.I laid down on the bed and tried to snuggle the dogs through the onslaught.Saoirse stormed and paced, her fury shaking our rafters more than the gun fire.

“You need to do something!”She screamed at me.“They can’t do this!”

“The law says they can,” I kept my voice soft, conscious of alarming the dogs, cautious not to raise the stress level in the house to the point of Bob’s anger forcing an unpleasant confrontation with the neighbors.

As long as the Westchesters discharge their weapons at least 500 feet from my home, there is no authority that will interfere.The pond is 500 feet.

“You have to go over there and stop them!”

I kept my face placid, but inwardly I winced.Because in that moment, Saoirse was discovering that I’m not the superhero she thought I was.

I would not confront the neighbors.“We don’t want conflict with them,” I tried to explain.“Because then, whenever we come home and they’re up, this will be a war zone, and not a place of peace.”

“They don’t have the right to do this!”

“They’ll get bored soon.”I walked away to the kitchen and began putting lunch together.She stormed up to her room.The explosions alternated between tannerites, shot guns, automatic weapons, and then, I think, a few fireworks thrown in for good measure.By the time lunch was on the table, however, our mountaintop had fallen silent again.Yup.They got bored.

But the bullfrogs didn’t sing that night.

A few days later, we put packs on our backs and trek off into the state forest behind our house.We go down to Mallet pond and pitch our tents, celebrating the start of summer beside the water’s edge for a few days.I take joy that those bullfrogs are still going strong.

On the day of the solstice, we take off on a trek with an unknown destination.We follow the dirt roads and trails through the state land until we get up to the holding ponds above Mallet.There, we see that the Westchesters must have had a busy Saturday.On Friday, Bob and I had hiked to these ponds, and they were serene as ever.But on the solstice, we see the damage from their ATVs.They’ve broken the bank of the larger pond, flooded the trail, performed donuts in the mud, created small flooding rivers.We follow the ruts further into the forest, and any place the winter storms laid down a tree across the path, they rammed their vehicles into the woods and over the stone walls built by the settlers here in the 1840s, grinding them down into the forest floor.

Our solstice celebration is turning into a mourning for our public land.Saoirse’s fourteen-year-old sense of outrage and justice rings through the woods.“We have to catch them at it!We have to take them to court!”

And, once again, I have no words, no plans, no ideas to salve this teenager’s outrage.Bob engages both girls in reading the forested landscape around them.He momentarily distracts Saoirse from her fire and fury by urging her to decode history from the clues around her.

And I go into myself, marveling at my sense of powerlessness over this problem; agog that so few people can do so much damage in so little time.I wallow in Bob’s and my impotence.We teach our daughters to stand up for what they believe.We urge them to live their lives based on their most deeply-held values.And then, we stay quiet while the neighbors trash our state forest.But we cannot win this battle.

We’ve tried seeking justice in the past.It doesn’t work.DEC officers cannot be in all places at once; we can’t predict when people will set out to destroy our lands; and the officers cannot convict based on our observations alone.Instead, I try to get the girls to understand the despair and lack of imagination that fuels this destructive behavior.“No one taught them how to be in the woods,” I often say.“They don’t know how to simply enjoy it.”“They’re too restless inside to accept the quiet.” “They just know how to buy whatever’s sold to them; and then smash and destroy.”But on this solstice, my oft-repeated words ring hollow to my oldest daughter.

Saoirse wants to wish upon them injury; something to stop them from their actions.I remind her of the rule of three:whatever you put out in the universe comes back to you three times.Instead, I urge her to wish for them inner peace and quiet joys.

We follow the trail deeper, to a point where the Westchesters must have grown bored yet again,as the destruction comes to a stop.We stay on it until it brings us up to another dirt road, and that leads us past a swamp, rich in loquacious bullfrogs to counsel my soul.Just beyond the swamp is the old grown-over graveyard that my parents used to bring me to as a child.We choose to go in and visit our quieter neighbors; to rest on their stone walls for water and a snack.

As we do, Saoirse begins to wander among the tall weeds, pushing them aside to read the names carved into the rocks.Hamm.Hadsell.Becker.Her eyes light up.

“Mom!We know these names!”

The dates on the stones are all from the 1800s, but in my own life, I’ve known the family members of many of these people.

I remember wandering these back roads and hillsides as a teenager with Sanford, my surrogate grandfather and farming neighbor up the road, who’d stumble into these hidden places with me while we were out picking berries.He would use his cane to thwak away at the overgrowth, taking just a few minutes to restore a few graves and share a few stories about the deceased before pushing on to find more fruit for his pail.

I amble down the path and greet these old friends.And as I look carefully at each stone, I realize that while we can’t winthis battle, we are winning the war.The fact that I am standing here with my family on the solstice, loving these stones and this land, investing the entirety of my life into this community is evidence of that.Sanford’s grandfather was one of the original settlers of this town.He walked this place with me until I loved it so much, I could make my life nowhere else.And Bob and I walk this place with our daughters, instilling the same passion.

Saoirse is entitled to her anger.At fourteen, it is a manifestation of her love for our home.

“Saoirse!” I grab her arm as she catches up to me.“Do you see these stones?You’ll never find a Westchester here.”She gives me a sideways glance.I stumble forward, trying to make it all make sense for her.“People like the Westchesters come and go.But all these people stayed, and so many of their children stayed, because they all love this place.That’s howwe stop it.We love it.Look how many more people are here who have always loved this place compared to the people who trash it.”

I don’t think she’s listening. I leave her with her thoughts. But in my mind, I can tally how many Westchesters have come and gone during the forty-plus years I’ve called this town home.But so many of the names carved into the stones have stuck around, working day in and day out, always making things a little bit better, always keeping the natural world sacred.And slowly, this love of place becomes our culture.And that culture attracts newcomers who share that love.The destructive newcomers eventually burn themselves out.But the ones who fall in love stick around and make it home.And when people fall in love and around, time is on our side.

Saoirse links arms with me as we leave the graveyard and head back to the forested path.“I’m so glad we’re here,” her voice has softened, and the smile across her face is broad and true.She is suddenly loving her day.We find our way back to the woods, then hook around to come up the other side of Mallet pond.There, we stumble on an extensive trail of fishing line choking the passage and the saplings.Quietly, she works with Ula, Bob and me as we trace it out and remove it.We find the discarded bottles, and pack them away in our pack.The graveyard has melted everyone’s anger,replacing it with love and an eagerness to express it through cleaning and tending.

We return from our three days in the wilderness and I am happy for a hot shower and a soft bed.I’m also happy to lie underneath my windows, listening to the thrushes.And then, that night, just before I drift off to sleep, I hear it:

]]>http://kindredmedia.org/2018/07/bullfrogs-and-graveyards-on-a-sense-of-belonging/feed/0Voices Of Wisdom: Birth, Relationships And Renewal From Peruvian Mastershttp://kindredmedia.org/2018/07/voices-of-wisdom-birth-relationships-and-renewal-from-peruvian-masters/
http://kindredmedia.org/2018/07/voices-of-wisdom-birth-relationships-and-renewal-from-peruvian-masters/#respondSat, 07 Jul 2018 17:48:40 +0000http://kindredmedia.org/?p=21539“Anthropology gives us insights into how relational experiences and communication patterns within different cultures directly shape the development of the mind,” wrote Daniel J. Siegel in his book The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are. As a Western woman given the unique and rare opportunity of integrating with […]

As a Western woman given the unique and rare opportunity of integrating with an indigenous family from the Q’ero tribe, I can sincerely attest to Siegel’s statement. Q’ero descend from their Inkan ancestors in the Peruvian Andes, where I lived between 2009 and 2011, and hold the special lineage of Inkan initiation. Their culture and traditions remained nearly in tact for many centuries after the Spanish Inquisition, a remarkable feat attributed to extra sensory guidance from their ancestors, lineage masters, and profound connection with Nature.

In his chapter that introduced the field of study known as Interpersonal Neurobiology, Siegel discussed how mind emerges from both the entire neural system as well as communication patterns in relationships. After reading, I began contemplating the importance of renewing interpersonal relationships in order to keep one’s neurological system fresh and evolving. Q’ero have several nature-based methods for doing so, including the exchange of coca leaves between family and friends, ceremony, and initiation. The key element is Nature.

Unfortunately, this element has been deficient in modern and technocratic societies. Yet forces of Nature alone birth our children no matter the extent of medical intervention used during labor. Ask any birthing person — the majority will undoubtedly be able to express a connection with all people who have birthed throughout time. The identity a birthing person may experience with the timeless lineage of all birthing people clearly illustrates a nature-based renewal process.

The communication patterns of Q’ero are in direct relationship with their environment. Every geographical feature, all plants and animals (humans included), and their Quechua language are composed of kawsay, translated as living energy. Kawsay is communicable through telepathy, sensory experience, and verbal exchange. As I underwent initiation in their lineage, kawsay pacha, translated as world of living energy, became accessible and at times directly experienceable.

Multiple families from Q’ero gather for a renewal ceremony

Oftentimes during ceremony, I experienced kawsay as silk-like threads composed of fine winds, like an internal breath that calms and restores. I’ve felt these threads when bonding with infants. Kawsay appears to be formless, potential accessible through the lineage with many layers of subtlety. It is the initiate’s purpose to access unformed potential and birth it into being through the pathways laid out by their ancestors. By following in the footsteps of their ancestors, I felt very safe opening to the world of living energy.

Kawsay exists everywhere and at all times in various grades, from refined and subtle to dense and hard. For example, conflict between members of a community are characterized by density. There are special processes for establishing connections with refined kawsay that renew the relation between those in conflict. Without a renewal process, interpersonal relationships become evermore dense; that density is passed from one generation to the next.

Sound familiar? My mother birthed me at a hospital in Evanston, Illinois and requested an epidural without knowing the affects. When her bottom half went numb, she became anxiety and fear-stricken. She had relational tensions with my father, did not know the male ob-gyn on call, and had a lengthy history of abuse and neglect stemming from her own intrauterine experiences shaped by her alcoholic mother.

In 1984, the year I was born, my own ancestors were in for a surprise! Perhaps it was orchestrated by benevolent angels seeking healing for my lineage (my mother’s side are Irish Catholic). However it came about, I was born through dense layers of perpetuated trauma and somehow retained some semblance of awareness. However, as I grew I gradually became disconnected and disillusioned without a sense of purpose. Like a time capsule waiting to be found, a book on Tibetan Buddhism made it into my hands at age 18 that sparked my renewal journey.

Q’ero taught me that renewal occurs all the time, and that as human stewards of our environments, we have a responsibility to the organic process. It is our responsibility to ensure that renewal stays on track by birthing our future generations through sacred pathways laid out by our ancestors. Birth is a sacred and ceremonial act. With every birth there is an opportunity to sustain awareness of the naturally occurring renewal process. When parents are aware, bonding is strengthened and the newborn as well as the entire lineage benefits.

How is it possible to sustain awareness and renew our relations without time-tested cultural practices, especially in the case of pregnancy and parenting? In Western societies there is an immense amount of available information on cultural practices from around the globe. There are also highly developed fields of study that contribute theoretical frameworks and experiential methods of Western renewal processes. Below I list three simple and effective methods for renewal based on my experiences with the Peruvian wisdom tradition and my professional training in transpersonal psychology.

1) Immerse yourself in nature.

Begin this practice by establishing a threshold, literally a boundary that you create or imagine (for example, the space between two trees). Before crossing the threshold, set an intention and write it down. Decide on a length of time for your journey and set a timer, or don’t use a timer and follow your intuition. Take a few moments to center and ground yourself, then cross your threshold. Once you’re on the other side of your threshold, you’re in a transitory and liminal space. Explore your environment as you choose, noticing the reflections Nature offers you. At any point you may sit, walk, run, listen, smell, etc.. When your timer goes off, return to your threshold and cross from the opposite side in which you began. Journal, write poetry, or make art immediately afterward. If you choose not to use a timer, I encourage you to take a little more time for exploration after your initial sense of culmination. I’ve found that the extra amount of time often reveals some of my more profound insights. This can be done by yourself, with a partner or a group. Please be sure that you are in a familiar and safe place before embarking on a journey, where your threshold is easily accessible. Thanks to John Davis, Ph.D. for initiating me into this practice during my graduate studies at Naropa University.

2) Receive support and bodywork from a trained healer.

When I was traveling with my Q’ero family, I was conducting individual healings called mesa limpia (translated as cleansing). Today I offer Body-Centered Psychotherapy, an integration of craniosacral and regressive therapy. The body profoundly stores trauma – what Q’ero may consider density. Through gentle and non-invasive touch alongside skillful communication of emotional experience, whole body healing and transformation is achievable.

For anyone seeking renewal through bonding with their unborn, healing birth or ancestral trauma, or recalling perinatal experiences, I suggest finding a somatic therapist that specializes in pre- and perinatal psychology. Group processes focusing on the same are also available and include Dr. Ray Castellino’s Womb Surround, and Dr. Stanislav Grof and Christina Grof’s Holotropic Breathwork. Oftentimes professionals local to you may offer their own group support and bodywork processes. A benefit of group process is that you can attend with your partner, family, and friends. Thanks to the Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health and to Sandy Morningstar, M.A. for teaching me perinatal tools during my postgraduate studies.

3) Participate in a ceremony.

There is a fortuitous abundance of available cultural practices in Western communities including meditation, yoga, tai chi, and pranayama. Empowerments facilitated by

Buddhist lamas are readily available across the United States and other countries. Hindu saints travel around the world offering blessings. Indigenous and Native peoples make certain cultural practices available to non-native peoples. Revival movements in Judaism, Christianity and Druidry offer connection with the sacred through ceremony and ritual. Your own cultural background may already have a renewal practice. Many Westerners have co-opted traditional practices that may benefit you on a personal level, such as a Mother Blessing (formerly Blessingway, a Navajo tradition used by Westerners in place of a baby shower).

You may also find community new or full moon circles in your area. Use discernment in locating a ceremony by inquiring into the community and its practices beforehand – do an internet search and ask multiple people if there is a concern for safety. Thanks to don Humberto Quispe Soncco and doña Bernardina Apaza Flores of Q’eros for teaching me that happy and loving community nourishes, restores, and renews.

Q’ero taught me everything I know about Nature. They taught me that it is possible to change rigid structures in my mind into fluid communication patterns. I am truly humbled to be my own example of transformational power. May the practices and information mentioned in this article benefit you in your renewal journey.

]]>http://kindredmedia.org/2018/07/voices-of-wisdom-birth-relationships-and-renewal-from-peruvian-masters/feed/0Ending Patriarchyhttp://kindredmedia.org/2018/06/ending-patriarchy/
http://kindredmedia.org/2018/06/ending-patriarchy/#commentsThu, 28 Jun 2018 21:17:22 +0000http://kindredmedia.org/?p=21506Caption: Protesters with sign denouncing the “patriarchy” in the society during the “Women’s March on Washington” to protest against Trump presidency on January 21, 2017 in Toronto, Canada. Photo by Shutterstock/arindambanerjee “Rather than a means to an end, patriarchy is an end in itself, and the most serious threat to public health that the world […]

]]>Caption: Protesters with sign denouncing the “patriarchy” in the society during the “Women’s March on Washington” to protest against Trump presidency on January 21, 2017 in Toronto, Canada. Photo by Shutterstock/arindambanerjee

“Rather than a means to an end, patriarchy is an end in itself,

and the most serious threat to public health that the world has ever known.”

— Robert Hartman

Editor’s Note: A new survey shows the United States now ranks in the top ten most dangerous nations for women. The survey by the Thomson Reuters Foundation of about 550 experts in women’s issues around the globe labeled the U.S. the 10th most dangerous nation in terms of the risk of sexual violence, harassment and being coerced into sex. The foundation asked the experts which of the 193 United Nations member states they felt were “most dangerous for women and which country was worst in terms of health care, economic resources, cultural or traditional practices, sexual violence and harassment, non-sexual violence and human trafficking,” according to the foundation’s article on the survey. The United States is the only Western country on the list. See the study here.

Naming The Problem

Starting a conversation about the horrendous consequences of 7,000 years of patriarchy with most anyone is, at best, like trying to start a campfire in the rain. When I talk with other men informally about patriarchy, a rare few give me a knowing smile and a nod. Mainly though, after a couple of awkward seconds, his eyes glaze over and he has a “deer in the headlight” moment before his shoulders slump forward; I wonder if he wants to plead, “But I never raped anyone!”

Some say, “that’s just how men are; they will never change”. A significant minority of men insist that malehood is in trouble only because women have too much power already. I find it interesting that, despite the denials that men are the problem, many folks – women and men alike – still want to know how to stop the violence. Since men cause 98% of the violence world-wide, this is a tacit admission that men are, in fact, the problem.

The number of American troops killed in Afghanistan and Iraq between 2001 and 2012 was 6,488. The number of American women who were murdered by current or ex male partners during that time was 11,766. That’s nearly double the amount of casualties lost during war.

Domestic violence is not a singular incident, it’s an insidious problem deeply rooted in our culture — and these numbers prove that.

The percentage of financial abuse that occurs in all domestic violence cases. The number one reason domestic violence survivors stay or return to the abusive relationship is because the abuser controls their money supply, leaving them with no financial resources to break free.

The number of LGBT people murdered by their intimate partners in 2013. Fifty percent of them were people of color. This is the highest documented level of domestic violence homicide in the LGBT community in history.

The percentage of physical assaults perpetrated against women that are reported to the police annually.

Indeed: how do we deal with these careening bulls who threaten to pull down civilization?

Forming The Question

After almost a half-century as a health-care professional, I became curious about this “problem” and the obvious connection between men and the extreme violence I witnessed in various ERs and operating rooms. Later in my career, I counseled families and individuals, both in agency and private practice and found that overall, a majority admitted to serious abuses at the hands of a male partner, family member or caregiver, generally a man in a position of trust.

25 years of NICHD brain-behavior research documenting how early sensory deprivation, abuse and neglect patterns the brain for a lifetime of depression and violence.

Wherever I looked at different cultures – American, European, Middle Eastern, Russian, South American – I found that roughly the same statistic emerged: men commit extremely violent acts everywhere, and not just in the community with guns and knives, but they are also wantonly laying waste to the environment, taking food away from children, destroying healthcare and inflicting entirely unnecessary suffering everywhere.

After four years of focused research and writing about the history, ancient and modern, of violence and conflict, I turned to the fields of psycho-history, neuroscience, brain development, epigenetics, and early childhood learning to understand what is ‘Eating Men’. Combining this new scientific knowledge with my experience in diverse aspects of healthcare and my clinical practice in counseling psychology, I finally saw the “blizzard before the snow’”.

Psychologists and psychotherapists frequently view the family as a system. When one member of that system begins to “misbehave” in some way, very often another member of the system supports the negative behavior. When I considered that the “wizards” behind ecological catastrophe, stunning cruelty and massive population trauma are 98% male, I came to realize that for such extreme and toxic androcentric assumptions to flourish for the past 5-7000 years, something must be reinforcing it, supporting it.

My own “ah-ah” moment came when I realized that patriarchy is just a container in which to hide the toxic parts of our human selves.Directly and indirectly, patriarchy is a system of totalitarian control that supports and promotes the conditions — like racism, scapegoating, climate warming and unregulated gun ownership — absolute prerequisites for violence and chaos to erupt. Patriarchy is an umbrella term under which culture, capitalism and its other elements are mere “shell corporations” of male control. Rather than a means to an end, patriarchy is an end in itself, and the most serious threat to public health that the world has ever known.

To truly understand what patriarchy is about you need to get into an unhappy mood. A miserable frame of mind. A place where no one knows who you are. A place where your cries of hunger and abuse go unheard. A place where being vulnerable is dangerous and you walk alone. Exile. Separate. But that’s not all. If I haven’t made the point well enough: patriarchy is both implicit and explicit in everything we do, what we wear, what we believe in, what our roles are, what not to do, who to love. All of it. It is our Old Story of Separation from Life.

Marry that to patriarchy’s history of obsession with conflict and suffering, by which it sustains itself, and who would hesitate to shout out from the highest towers and demand that men stop putting their legislative hands on women’s bodies, stop producing radioactive waste that is poisonous for millions of year, stop creating endocrine disruptors, stop raping women and stop having sex with your daughters, stop waging endless wars, and even insist men quit their jobs in the oil industry or at Smith & Wesson. Stop destroying the future!

We must demand that men WAKE UP and stop working out our lack of early nurturing and the fear that is epidemic in a death-worshipping, war-loving culture. Despite the violence that literally rocks cradles around the world, most cultures go on praising their narcissistic bullies as saviors, and it is alarmingly unpopular, if not dangerous, to claim that we MEN are the problem.

Maybe it’s a “claim too far”, but it’s obvious to me that we must re-assess how men actually function in society. In light of men’s historically catastrophic abuses of power, a question begs to be asked: in what ways have patriarchal-inspired stressors, intrauterine trauma, the pressure to be the ‘right kind’ of boy, toxic shame and rage at our own vulnerabilities create a practice of masculinity that is so toxic as to make him, for a generation or two at least, exactly the wrong type of candidate for any position of power?

Growing Up Male

Growing up male is a complex river of tides, unseen cultural, political and biologic forces, and harsh socio-economic factors. Not the least of which are the four laws of a patriarchal manhood: stoicism, homophobia, aggression and misogyny. The biological roots of male vulnerability include environmentally triggered, intrauterine stress that causes an untimely release of the stress hormone cortisol.

Be Worried About Boys, Especially Baby Boys: A Three Part Series by Darcia Narvaez, PhD

Cells in the process of dividing are especially vulnerable. Male fetal cells divide more rapidly than a girls. As a result, the boy child is naturally and exquisitely sensitive to stress in the womb. Cortisol, while essential for development when it is released at the proper time, is poisonous to rapidly dividing, first trimester fetal brain cells. The post-natal period of brain development and attachment is also key, because it is there that the ‘young man’ gets his first taste of love and acceptance, as is his due, or shame and isolation, which will be his (and our) undoing.

Ironically, from the start of the history they themselves wrote, we men have shown ourselves to be the truest and most reliable victims of our own appalling snares; and frequently, because of unrelenting confusion, betrayal and fear, we go berserk.

It’s a hardscrabble road from boyhood innocence to suicide bomber, from summer in his pocket to unbearable narcissism and despair. What’s worse than that? A boy isn’t even allowed to complain about it. Stoicism is a scar on childhood. Stoicism creates isolation that can force a child to walk alone in darkness.

When, as a result of patriarchal rules, we have called a boy ‘weak’ for expressing feelings of fear or sadness, or mocked him because he was different, we’ve essentially murdered his spirit and transplanted a culturally-created toxic virus that hijacks the operating system of a child. In the years to come he will call it “demon”. The karmic results are the same: not only are we men primarily responsible for almost everything that’s gone wrong, but ironically we’re doing it, not because we are bad or evil, we’re doing it because we’ve been operating from a deep well of sadness and shame at our innate vulnerability, which is rooted in human prehistory, male biology, and the unique particulars of the male’s response to trauma.

Exploring the nexus of men’s biologic vulnerability with the stressful demands that patriarchy places on men, I have found that across man’s lifespan and cultures, living up to patriarchy’s expectations can be as deadly as a heart attack. The recipe for making a man starts in the womb (perhaps even before), but after birth the cultural injunctions to ‘be a man’ are so tone-deaf to the realities, needs and wonder of being a boy that in place of a childhood, he gets Hell on Earth instead. Right from the ‘git-go’, from conception, we are simply not ‘built’ to tolerate stress as well as females.

Any child is harmed by abuse and neglect, but male fetuses, male babies, male toddlers, male children and male teens are especially vulnerable to hardship. Boys are handicapped if they don’t get the loving care they need early on. Without it, he starts out a day late and a dollar short. Since we don’t see the brutality of patriarchal control as the cause, our social structures are unable to evolve in a way that provides the ‘special protections’ that all boys need, absolutely. As a result, we are still harming boys by trying to “toughen” them up, and sadly, most boys will never fully recover. Their natural development is waylaid and changed forever; they carry their wounds into manhood and, at best, men have shorter lives than women, punctuated by a greater risk of accidental death, suicide, disease and disability. For too many, the trajectory of male life follows the Hobbsian arc: “short, brutish and nasty”.

Ending Patriarchy

But what, anyone could rightly ask, is being done about it? Not Much. Although it’s a great start, we seem to think that passing legislation outlawing behaviors that patriarchy implicitly encourages is enough. That a slap on the wrist, some cell time, bankruptcy and ruin, a little public shaming would scare anyone straight. Yet, no matter how pugilistic we are against offenders like Weinstein and dozens (would-be-billions) of other men, if we hope that legal actions like this will change the way men think about women – hope again. No law can ever heal the root cause of misogyny, racism, greed, religious fundamentalism, and environmental chaos. These are the same old tools, albeit with some new names, that patriarchy has used for millennia to “stir the pot”, to keep conflict in motion. If laws had this kind of power, we wouldn’t need such laws and regulations in the first place.

March for Moms, #MeToo, Birth Trauma, And Ending Medical Model Patriarchy: An Exclusive Kindred Interview, Download and Transcript Available

Arguably, it might be said that what the rule of law attempts to address, or more likely cover up, are the fundamental fault lines of human nature that patriarchy has cracked open through one privation or another. Put another way, our failings as a patriarchal driven society to properly serve boy’s early needs, and as parents and communities, to properly protect and nurture them. We must take into account that all life strives towards wholeness or goodness; and we must pass laws that protect THAT, far beyond the accumulation of power and wealth. We must encourage boys’ general welfare in such a way as to make “it-takes-a-village” model more useful than the sound byte it has become.

Yet, out of fear, denial or apathy (or the ‘horror’ of such village intimacy?) we soft-shoe stage right or left and are content with mudslinging, demonizing every group our leaders have told us we should be afraid of. We create demons and scofflaws of anyone who feels like “other”. We allow Trump to deport people, responsible fathers and mothers, who have been in the US for 20, 30, 40 years. There is a law in physics that for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction. So while patriarchy is busy making “other” out of decent human beings, in the eyes of others we are the American demon. Who can tell one demon from the other? Not me. I just see demons begetting demons, never justice, never peace.

It’s either too much government, or too little, but by any name, if you follow the signatures of family, environmental, social, and religious upheavals, you will invariably find that a destructive, self-serving patriarchy is at the center of virtually every manmade catastrophe. The list of crimes that toxic hyper-masculinity have perpetrated worldwide for seven millennia come mostly under the heading of ‘Crimes Against Humanity’. Yet, the idea that men and patriarchal ideology and systems are responsible for the planetary killing mess we are facing is still viewed as pure ‘rubbish’, if not gender heresy. Of course, that’s what we can expect from a system of control that has had 7,000 years to develop, 7,000 years to adapt and 7,000 years to really get inside your head.

How could something so outrageous and harmful go unnoticed for so long? Feminist, Adrienne Rich, wrote in Of Woman Born 40+ years ago, that men’s power is hard to see because “it permeates everything”. Of course, this implies that patriarchy is right here in front of us, but cleverly hidden within the sheer ordinariness of yet another school shooting, and entirely dependent on our willingness to allow violent conflict and suffering to be normal.

The vastness of patriarchal space makes it difficult to find an edge you can get your thumb under and peel a bit of it away; discovering where you begin and where self fades into communal blackness is a valuable pursuit in any search for meaning. Patriarchy is everything we can think of, right down to the Happy Meal you bought your son at McDonalds, which is another way of saying that consumerism is just one of the many tentacles of patriarchy that emboldens the male shadow-spirit to conflate a calorie-laden, tropical forest clearcutter, ecologic devastator, land-fill-filler, heart-hurting diet with happiness.

Hunger is good for patriarchy and it’s good for business, so it is a central doctrine that we should want ‘more’. As one commercial demands, “Obey Your Thirst!” After all, if hunger is good for the economy, then it’s flag-waving patriotic.

Patriarchy likes you unhappy because unhappy, hungry people buy more stuff than happy, satisfied people. This kind of consumerism is a blizzard of manufactured, unmet needs that depend on unrequited hunger.

Sadly, since there is no permanent satisfaction possible anywhere, outside of cocaine maybe, like Monsanto shareholders, few men of the patriarch will ever desire less.

So we are back at the beginning, the part of the discussion that deserves real conversation because the answer to, “How do we fix it?” is really messy.

The short answer: IT’S THE WRONG QUESTION!

Healing The Male Heart

In AA we often talk about the “gifts of sobriety” such as improved relationships. Some of my early “gifts”, much to my despair, were anger and resentment. This is really normal stuff for the early path, because sobriety allowed me to be present enough to feel the anger for the first time. Inevitably, I came to ask, “Why is it that I’m sober, but my life is still a drunken mess?” And the equally inevitable reply: addiction is a symptom, and my life being a mess, a manifestation of something wounded at the level of my most basic self, far deeper and more unexplored than I could imagine.

Is A Primal Wound Driving You To Addiction? Is suffering a necessary part of the human condition? Is it species normal for individuals to feel anxious—like impending doom, a fear of intimacy, or a sense of falseness and meaninglessness? Part one of a seven part series.

Simply stated, my life had been such a blizzard of unmet need that I didn’t understand, that I tripped over the demands of hundreds of patriarchal chains strewn across my path. Twenty-four sober years later, I can appreciate my naiveté because I didn’t see the huge paradox that loomed over those first sober years that made my early questions and doubts irrelevant: my drinking had nothing to do with alcohol.

In a similar way (hang on), the possession of an assault rifle has nothing to do with protection or safety. They both cover up those deep fault lines of male vulnerability. Every addict learns to “protect” their supply. An unregulated gun market and the 2nd amendment serve to do just that: to provide unrestricted access to a gun enthusiast’s ‘DOC’ – drug of choice – in this case, weapons of mass destruction. There are many DOC’s out there: food, sex, gambling, video games, just to skim a few off the top, and all highly resistant to change.

However, the “Father of all DOC’s” is Patriarchy.

Wherever patriarchy thrives, the privileges that membership confer, like the ‘right’ to dominate and terrorize those you are suppose to serve, to interpret the Earth and Women as commodities to consume and regulate, to decide who deserves to thrive and who deserves to barely cope, who gets a living wage and who doesn’t, who has sovereignty over their bodies and who doesn’t. It is rightly said that those who demand power over others have the least access to authentic inner power themselves.

Feeling powerful or arrogant or “chosen”, that grand cosmic joke of control, is a narcotic; and like any DOC, we never have to feel what we don’t want to feel, face what we don’t want to face. It’s his denial of men’s innate vulnerabilities that’s been at the root of everything that’s been wrong for 7,000 years.

So, if the important question remains, “What Do We Do About Men?”, then the only answer possible lies not in creating more demons, more surveillance, higher border walls, more prisons, bigger guns or more laws. Paradoxically, even women’s “salvation” lies not within a global #MeToo Movement, it lies within something even more radical: a change in the male heart.

]]>http://kindredmedia.org/2018/06/ending-patriarchy/feed/2“Government-Sanctioned Child Abuse”: Border Separationhttp://kindredmedia.org/2018/06/government-sanctioned-child-abuse/
http://kindredmedia.org/2018/06/government-sanctioned-child-abuse/#respondMon, 18 Jun 2018 01:12:21 +0000http://kindredmedia.org/?p=21472CAPTION: DETROIT, MICHIGAN – JUNE 14, 2018: Protestors display multi-lingual signs at the protest to Keep Families Together in Detroit. (Spanish on sign translates to: “Families United, not Divided”). Photo by Shutterstock/Stephanie Kenner Government officials are doing irreparable harm to families seeking asylum. They are separating children from their families, no matter the age of the child. […]

She says: “Officials at the Department of Homeland Security claim they act solely ‘to protect the best interests of minor children.'”

Hardly.

Is it ignorance or malice? We don’t know, but the justifications sound both ignorant and malicious.

What ignorance are they displaying? Here is a short description:

Make America’s Children Healthy Again, a two part series

Human children are not like other animals. They are born so immature they look like fetuses of other animals till about 18 months of age. In the first years of life, children co-construct their biological and social capacities, organizing their basic features around the experiences they have. The norms for our species is the evolved nest. One specific need that separation denies is physical affection from known caregivers. This need among social mammals like us was well documented by Harry Harlow’s monkey experiments. Young monkeys deprived of their mother’s touch developed into aggressive and socially awkward individuals, never to recover.

Extensive distress shifts development, undermining what otherwise develops in a loving supportive environment–biologically healthy systems and social engagement. Instead extensive distress enhances primitive survival mechanisms in ways that grow to harm self and others—e.g., the stress response becomes hyperreactive. Because the first years of life are so sensitive to experience, the individual may never recover to reach their full potential (although they may recover enough to survive—i.e., what is often called “resilience”).

Early life stress and undercare lead to underdeveloped or misdeveloped adults. We should not be surprised that US adults make such bad, insensitive decisions, based on their own experience and lack of education.

Is the policy malicious? Yes, that too. The fear mongering promoted by current politicians—e.g., that refugees are dangerous—makes it seem logical that you “manage” the borders in any way to keep the insiders safe.

Shonkoff, J.P., & Phillips, D.A. (Eds.) (2000). From neurons to neighborhoods: The science of early childhood development (Board on Children, Youth, and Families, National Research Council and Institute of Medicine). Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

]]>http://kindredmedia.org/2018/06/government-sanctioned-child-abuse/feed/0Make America’s Children Great Again, Part 2: Affectionhttp://kindredmedia.org/2018/06/make-americas-children-great-again-part-2-affection/
http://kindredmedia.org/2018/06/make-americas-children-great-again-part-2-affection/#respondSun, 10 Jun 2018 22:22:05 +0000http://kindredmedia.org/?p=21474Human babies (at full term birth) look and act like fetuses for about 18 months! Yes, it is a shock. A baby should be in the womb that much longer to grow what is needed to be able to move around the world like other newborn animals who can feed themselves shortly after birth. A […]

Human babies (at full term birth) look and act like fetuses for about 18 months! Yes, it is a shock. A baby should be in the womb that much longer to grow what is needed to be able to move around the world like other newborn animals who can feed themselves shortly after birth. A fetus still has much to grow before they are ready to face the world and for humans part of “fetal development” happens after birth in the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth trimesters. It’s not just the body that grows bigger. Most importantly, a human baby’s head grows enormously during those 18 months, the biggest reason for an early exit from the womb.

Winner of the William James Book Award from the American Psychological Association in 2015

In reports about children’s health by international organizations, affectionate touch is often not discussed. I think this is because it is not an issue in developing countries where concerns about child health are typically focused. Developing nations still offer their babies many of the characteristics of the evolved nest, including affection.

In my lectures, I show pictures of young children’s average experiences in preindustrial societies and the USA. The first set of photos show young children being held most of the time, carried in arms or wraps. The photos from the USA show how children typically spend much of every 24 hours — isolated in playpens, carriers, strollers, or cribs.

Why is physical affection, or positive touch, so important? Touch has significant effects on a growing brain and body. Here are a few examples.

(2) Skin to skin contact with infants is especially valuable. It promotes healthy sleep cycles, adaptive behavioral arousals, exploratory activities, social and cognitive functioning (Field, 1995; James McKenna). It also helps parents early on tune into their infant’s signals so they can be responsive to needs and communications. This is another key factor for optimizing children’s normal development.

For example, Meaney and colleagues have shown that a rat pup who does not have high nurturing touch in the first 10 days misses the time period for “turning on” genes related to controlling anxiety for the rest of life. As a result, whenever something new comes up, the offspring becomes anxious—unless drugs are given. The equivalent time period for turning on such genes is the first 6 months of life, when in our 2 million years of evolutionary history babies would have been carried and in touch with caregivers 24/7.

(5) Cosleeping (safely) helps a baby learn to regulate breathing and other systems (Mckenna, 2008). In fact, safe bedsharing and breastfeeding (breastsleeping) are an evolutionary inheritance that optimizes infant growth and wellbeing. (For guidance on safe cosleeping and bedsharing see James McKenna’s website.)

References

Gale, C.R., O’Callaghan, F.J., Bredow, M., Martyn, C.N., & Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children Study Team (2006). The Influence of head growth in fetal life, infancy, and childhood on intelligence at the ages of 4 and 8 years. Pediatrics, 118(4), 1486-1492.

]]>http://kindredmedia.org/2018/06/make-americas-children-great-again-part-2-affection/feed/0The Bio-Cultural Conflict And The Rights Of Childrenhttp://kindredmedia.org/2018/05/the-bio-cultural-conflict-and-the-rights-of-children/
http://kindredmedia.org/2018/05/the-bio-cultural-conflict-and-the-rights-of-children/#respondThu, 31 May 2018 17:03:39 +0000http://kindredmedia.org/?p=21393﻿﻿﻿ Robin Grille talks about his Parenting for a Peaceful World USA Tour, seven cities in 12 days, outside of the Museum of Motherhood in New York City with Lisa Reagan, Kindred’s editor. In this interview, Robin shares his view that the Conscious Parenting Movement is also the Children’s Liberation Movement. You can read the […]

Robin Grille talks about his Parenting for a Peaceful World USA Tour, seven cities in 12 days, outside of the Museum of Motherhood in New York City with Lisa Reagan, Kindred’s editor. In this interview, Robin shares his view that the Conscious Parenting Movement is also the Children’s Liberation Movement. You can read the Children’s Wellbeing Manifesto, written by Robin and Kindred’s founder, Kelly Wendorf, here.

Biological Imperatives and the Rights of Children

ARE AMERICANS GIVING UP THE BATTLE OF THE BIO-CULTURAL CONFLICT?

At the core of the Conscious Parenting Movement lies a Sphinx Riddle for the Ages:

“How will adult homo sapiens discover and then meet the biologically necessary, primal needs of their offspring while living in a Dominator Culture whose patriarchal institutions and religions contemptuously reject feminine values of nurturing, collaboration, and community?”

A both practical and profound exploration of this riddle is ongoing by 200+ contributors, pioneering partners, thought leaders, and social change artists on Kindred’s virtual pages. While there are hundreds of books, organizations, and websites devoted to “conscious parenting,” collectively we are all participating in an organic consciousness-raising movement, one that ultimately, as Robin Grille points out in the video above, is a Children’s Liberation Movement. Grille says this movement follows the historical path of all civil rights movements, and the activists who worked to empower marginalized and persecuted people. And, like most revolutions, we are woefully underfunded and unrecognized.

Please support our 20 year old, award-winning, nonprofit work to Share the New Story of Childhood, Parenthood and the Human Family.

Considering the impetus for the Conscious Parenting Movement above, it should come as no surprise that some Americans are giving up on parenthood. According to a new study, birth rates are at a 30 year low as many Americans are choosing to forego the unwinnable battle of what Joseph Chilton Pearce called the Bio-Cultural Conflict. Pearce pointed out in a dozen seminal works over four decades that Westerners are forced to choose between the Biological Imperative, fashioned by billions of years of evolution to move us individually and collectively toward optimal wholeness, and the Cultural Imperative demanded by a Dominator Culture of conformity to an unsustainable, inhuman system.

A deeper look into the core of this Bio-Cultural Conflict reveals a seed of self-doubt continually sowing confusion: why do we feel like we don’t belong here?

The answer is in the field of science tossed away by religions as completion for their own origin story of who we are: Evolution. We evolved in a place, with a place, with our relations, the rocks and streams and trees and animals of that place. Pre-conquest consciousness humans did not recognize property, as they were embedded in the life giving land around them. They were not and had never considered themselves separate from the earth. It was not a sentimental notion, that they were one with life; it was practical wisdom. If we were to take an Eastern screech owl out of the native trees it evolved alongside of for shelter and throw it into a desert environment, it would suffer, and potential die if it could not adapt to the foreign environment. If that species were homo sapiens, a human long-since separated from the place of its origin, it would suffer… but being a resourceful species, and one whose unique brain functioning creates stories… a homo sapien may, for survival purposes, adopt a story about how it was thrown out of the garden of Eden because it was “bad” and now needs to rely upon its betters – corporate raiders, conquistadors, enslavers with public relations departments – to tell it who it is and how to live… and here are some drugs for the pain of living this lie.

If the science of evolution were acknowledged as a framework and reference point for public policy, the basics required for optimal human development – safe birth, breastfeeding bonding, unbroken attachment to caregivers – would have manifested in the form of paid family leave, a safe maternal health system, breastfeeding promotion over formula, and support for new parents.

A clarifying look at the Sphinx Riddle above with Riane Eisler, Darcia Narvaez, and Michael Mendizza (below) helps us discover a sliver of hope: while our biology takes generations to change, neuroscience and cultural transformation theory show we create culture and therefore we can uncreate and recreate it again, now, quickly… but we will need to address our own Dominator enculturation first as individuals, before moving into collaborative partnership with others… and then new questions become possible, like:

As Americans, we will need to use our “active imaginations” to envision the New Story and its possibilities while our European counterparts are enjoying up to a year of paid parental leave, safe maternal health systems, support for breastfeeding and job security. As Riane Eisler’s work at the Center for Partnership Studies show, cultural transformation is possible (see more below).

Don’t get me wrong. I do hope that cellular biologist and conscious parenting advocate Bruce Lipton is right, and we’re capable of Spontaneous Evolution, individually and collectively. As we work to that end, there is a need for new language for our New Story, and a coherence around what it is we seek to be conscious of when we seek practical wisdom for re-parenting ourselves and modeling wholeness for our children who have the best chance of creating a sustainable, peaceful world.

To that end, I will be taking a long, overdue writing sabbatical this summer and will return in the fall with a number of completed works, including a New Story Primer and Workbook for parents, professionals and social change artists.

The primer accompanies the under-construction New Story Glossary of Terms, which pops up throughout the website to help you identify the new terminology needed to write our New Story! These resources support the virtual Parent and Professional Resource Center, also due for its grand opening this fall. You can listen to my New Story lecture, presented to the international study body of the Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health, APPPAH, here.

Please support our nonprofit work and help us to provide the practical framework, context and long history of the conscious parenting movement often missing from mainstream culture, who is actively searching for insights. Visit Conscious Parenting News to follow this search and emerging headlines, research and insights!

The Biological Imperative

In his book, The Biology of Transcendence: A Blueprint of the Human Spirit, Joseph Chilton Pearce explores: Why do we seem stuck in a culture of violence and injustice? How is it that we can recognize the transcendent ideal represented by figures such as Jesus, Lao-tzu, and many others who have walked among us and yet not seem to reach the same state?

In The Biology of Transcendence, Pearce examines the current biological understanding of our neural organization to address how we can go beyond the limitations and constraints of our current capacities of body and mind — how we can transcend. Recent research in the neurosciences and neurocardiology identifies the four neural centers of our brain and indicates that a fifth such center is located in the heart. This research reveals that the evolutionary structure of our brain and its dynamic interactions with our heart are designed by nature to reach beyond our current evolutionary capacities. We are quite literally, made to transcend.

Pearce explores how this “biological imperative” drives our life into ever-greater realms of being–even as the “cultural imperative” of social conformity and behavior counters this genetic heritage, blocks our transcendent capacities, and breeds violence in all its forms. The conflict between religion and spirit is an important part of this struggle. But each of us may overthrow these cultural imperatives to reach “unconflicted behavior,” wherein heart and mind-brain resonate in synchronicity, opening us to levels of possibility beyond the ordinary.

The innate and universal ‘intelligence of the heart,’ as Joseph Chilton Pearce would often say, asks, “Is it appropriate?”

Whereas, the intelligence of the predicting-controlling intellect asks only, “Is it possible?”

The evolving neocortex emerged from the physical and limbic centers of the nervous system. Once hatched, and stung with self-centered hubris, the images created by the exponentially-powerful upstart, lost touch with its source, imagining and then quite certain that IT was the source.

An insight is ever-so slowly emerging. What we identify and defend as our individual self-world-view, our self-image or ego, is a reciprocal and dynamic mirror of the collective-ego we call culture. Both emanate from the same abstracted image-making structures on the brain. Culture and self appear completely different. On close examination we discover that they are twin phantoms masquerading.

We are familiar with the, so called, mind-body split. The human body being nature herself in her latest of billions of years of evolving states of awareness, capacity and consciousness. The mind refers, again, to the abstracted, and therefore disembodied, mental images, that nature produced, which is one of her highest achievements. But, there is a fly spoiling the soup. Theoretical Physicist David Bohm, the man Einstein predicted would carry forward his works, describes:

“We don’t really understand the nature of our thought process; we’re not aware of how it works, how it’s disrupting, not only our society and our individual lives but also the way the brain and nervous system operate, making us unhealthy or perhaps even someway damaging the system. Krishnamurti recognizes that thought, rational, orderly, factual thought, such as in proper doing science, is valuable but the kind of thought that he has in mind is self-centered thought. At first sight one might wonder why self-centered thought is so bad. If the self were really there, then perhaps it would correct to center on the self because the self would be so important. But if the self is a kind of illusion, at least the self as we know it, then to center our thought on something illusory which is assumed to have supreme importance is going to disrupt the whole process and it will not only make thought about yourself wrong, it will make thought about everything wrong so that thought becomes a dangerous and destructive instrument.”

The conflict between the intelligence of the heart and egotistical culture was mythic way back in 300 BC. Storytellers describe the fall of man, being tossed out of the garden and the first or primary sin. Don’t get me wrong; imagination, symbols and metaphor are great tools, but not in the hands of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, which is what David was referring to.

Physical appropriateness is grounded in the deep, personal and moment-by-moment renewing insight that we are nature, all of it. Emotional appropriateness is compassionate-empathy, beautifully summed by the Golden Rule, knowing that everything we do to nature we do to ourselves, that we reap what we sew. Mature intellectual, self-cultural appropriateness is firmly rooted in these two, primary and essential sources. With this nested hierarchy properly nurtured, which is where the whole show falls apart, the magnificent creative power of the newest evolutionary structures are compelled and can do nothing less than create heaven on earth. What else is there? Not nurtured, with our identity trapped in a disembodied phantom-images of self, projected as culture, and we find ourselves surrounded by Dr. Frankenstein in every size, color and variety imaginable.

This, Kindred’s rich and divers feast, centers on a number of Frankenstein’s masquerading and the bio-cultural conflicts that will remain until we, once again, firmly bound creative-intellect securely with its true source, the intelligence of the heart. But, to do that, we must nurture that intelligence, something technology, Facebook or the iPhone will never touch.

The Cultural Imperative

“Human Evolution is now at a crossroads. Stripped to its essentials, the central human task is how to organize society to promote the survival of our species and the development of our unique potentials. A partnership society offers us a viable alternative.” – Riane Eisler, The Chalice and The Blade: Our History, Our Future

We tend to think of our culture as “just the way things are.” But, as Eisler points out, cultures change constantly. The issue is whether the change is surface change within the often unnamed assumptions of a domination system or transformative change that occurs at a systems level. Our time of massive dislocations is an opportunity for transformative change: change that will support a partnership system.

Providing resources for the cultural transformation from domination to partnership – to a way of living and making a living that is more equitable, peaceful, sustainable, and fulfilling – is Riane Eisler’s life’s work.

A list of her books and articles can be found in the Library and Bookstore section of this site. Here are three books to get you started on this exciting journey of learning and using new ideas.

The Chalice and The Blade
This book, hailed by Isabel Allende as “a magnificent book that can transform us,” by Ashley Montagu as “the most important book since Darwin’s Origin of Species,” and the LA Weekly as “the most significant work published in all our lifetimes,” first introduced Cultural Transformation Theory and changed the lives of millions of men and women world wide.

Sacred Pleasure
This book, hailed by the New York Times as “fascinating,” and by Gloria Steinem as “stunning, far-reaching, and practical,” traces the transformation of both sexuality and spirituality with the shift from partnership to domination – and offers us paths to a more fulfilling way of living and loving.

The Real Wealth of Nations
This book, hailed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu as “a template for the better world we have been so urgently seeking,” and by Publisher’s Weekly as “remarkably well referenced, well argued, insightful, and hopeful,” offers a roadmap to a new economics that combines the partnership elements of both capitalism and socialism, but goes further to a caring economics” that works for people and the planet.

Creating Sustainable Human Beings

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In this interview with Darcia Narvaez, PhD, a firebrand for the conscious parenting movement and neuroscience researcher at the University of Notre Dame, listeners discover the connections between the infant neurobiology, the lack of cultural “morality” and the current ecological crises “created by disconnected, brain-damaged adults, a product of modern parenting practices and beliefs.” How do we heal ourselves and the cycle of damage that results in broken people, broken systems and a broken planet?

Narvaez says there should be a “warning” sounded to adults considering bringing children into the world and conscious parenting educational programs in place to prepare adults for the shocking lack of support they will face in a dominator culture whose “immoral” social and political codes refuse to support the evidenced-based needs of infants.